


Sing Me A Lullaby

by ProwlingThunder



Series: The Everlasting List of Shenanigans [213]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Child Abuse, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kid!Lunafreya, Kid!Ravus, Lullabies, Ravus Needs A Break, Ravus Sings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 00:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14123913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: "Sing me a song!" She chirped."Go to bed, Luna.""Please?"





	Sing Me A Lullaby

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Omnibard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnibard/gifts).



> Prompt for Omnibard, may they enjoy the suffering: "Sing me a song, please!" Little Luna to Ravus!

It was late when he was shown into Mother's room, the moon having already risen high into the sky, marking it well past his bedtime. But Mother had said it would be soon, had said it would be _today,_ and he couldn't sleep. He had tried to nap, a little, but it was not to be so; he was too eager, the servants said, and the young heiress would make her debut only when she was prepared to do so, and he really should rest in the meantime. But he couldn't. So he was still awake.

He wanted to meet his sister.

He thought he understood why they had waited so long though, lured inside by the sound of his mother's voice. She sounded tired, and she looked tired, the way he'd only seen her when he woke up in the middle of the night and went to find her in her study, found her writing her letters. But she wasn't in the study, now; she was laying in her bed, propped up with a bunch of pillows, talking to one of the servants and the family doctor.

Ravus lingered at the doorway for a few moments, hesitating. The servant had come to fetch him, but then why was the doctor here..?

"Mother..? Is Luna ok?"

Mother turned away from them to look at him, stretching out one arm in wordless request. "Lunafreya is fine. Come here, my little prince-- come meet your sister." Ravus shot the doctor a distrustful look, but it was brief; he scrambled over to the side of the bed and up onto the covers with a little help from the servant, tucking himself under his mother's arm. Wrapped up in pale pink and held against her chest, there was a tiny baby.

_Luna._

"She's so _small,"_ he frowned at her. "Why is she so small?"

"The princess--" the doctor started, and Mother must have done something, motioned something, because he cut off abruptly and when Ravus looked up, he and the servant were leaving the room.

"Lunafreya's a baby," Mother assured him, squeezing his side. "All babies are small. _You_ were this small, once."

There was no way. Not as small as _Luna._ "Will she always be small?" he wondered, looking back down at her.

"No. Soon, she'll be as big as you are. And you will be bigger, of course. That's why you're the big brother."

"Why?"

"Why, to protect her, of course. Big brothers come first to get bigger, so they can make sure the world is safe for little sisters."

"Oh." He doesn't know what to make of that. The world is a big place and he's not big enough, yet, to go out there and make anything safe for Luna. She's so _tiny._ How will he ever manage to protect her? "Okay."

"Okay." Mother pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "Now lay down. I know you've been up all evening. Growing princes need their sleep to become knights."

Ravus frowned. He was grown! He was big! But he _was_ tired, so he did as he was told, snuggling down beneath his mother's blankets while she laid Luna in a basket that overhung the side of the bed. Mother and Luna were _safe_ and right here with him. He could sleep now.

 _"Lay down your head and I'll sing you a lullaby, back to the years of loo-li lai-lay."_ Mother started, her voice softening into song. She ran her fingers through his hair. _"And I'll sing you to sleep and I'll sing you tomorrow, bless you with love for the road that you go...."_

 

"Ravus." Tiny fingers on his shoulder. "Ravus." Grabbing at his blanket, poking him in the cheek. "Ravus."

He sighed heavily into his pillow and cracked a pale eye open. Outside, rain pounded heavy against his windows and he could hear distant thunder booming, both signs of Tenebrae's oft rainstorms.

She stood against the side of his bed and he stared at her as she poked his cheek again. "Ravus."

"Yes Luna."

"Ravus I had a bad dream."

"Okay."

"Can I stay with you?"

"Yes Luna." It was tricky, shaking off enough sleep to sit upright and help her onto the bed, under the covers. He fussed with one of the pillows long enough to make a barrier so she wouldn't roll off the edge. She did that, sometimes. He collapsed back into bed next to her and closed his eyes.

Poke. "Ravus."

He sighed. "Yes Luna."

"Sing me a song!" She chirped, like a bird herself.

"Go to bed, Luna."

"Please?"

"If I do, will you go to sleep?"

"Yes!"

He took a breath and propped himself up on his elbow, staring at her. Well.. if it would make her sleep...

_"Lunafreya, be not afraid. Though thunder explodes and lightning flash illuminates your tearstained face, I am here tonight. And someday you'll know that nature is so, this same rain that draws you near me falls on rivers and land, and forests and sand, and makes the beautiful world that you see in the morning...."_

 

The curtain to his room let the moonlight in, and it was a full moon out, casting the room in silver. It made Luna's hair look silver too, made her look unreal propped up there on the daybed, as surreal as the Glacian. Ravus had no idea how she had managed to get in here; through the servant's halls, maybe? She was always more wily than he was, knowing better how to get in and out of places she didn't want to be.

Niflheim might have locked him in his own suite but that didn't really _mean_ anything, for the princess of Tenebrae.

Queen, now. Because Mother..

Except Luna had been with _King Regis._

"Luna..." She started a little, lifted her head up from her knees, and Ravus caught sight of red-rimmed eyes, realized she'd been crying. She unfolded from the cushions, and Ravus crossed the length of the room in four long strides and swept her up. Didn't think about the pain when she closed her arms around him, pressing on bruises left to him by their gaoler. "Shh, I've got you now. Are you alright?"

Luna never cried with sound. Hadn't, ever since she was a baby, which had distressed the servants. But she'd always come to him, sought comfort next to him, the big brother that chased her fears away.

He hadn't managed to, this time. Mother had died for him. And he'd thought Luna had been with King Regis, he'd saw them running! "Are you injured? Luna." He drew away from her, turned her so he could examine her in the moonlight. There were bruises on her, too, he realized, raising a shaking hand to stroke her cheek. Fading from purple into green, several days old. Here, on her forearm, the shape of a grown man's fingers.

He knew the hands responsible for her injury were those responsible for his. "I can't believe King Regis let you _go."_

Luna flinched a bit, ducking her head as huge tears welled in her eyes, and she pulled herself back into his embrace, hunting for the comfort only an older brother could provide. "I let go, Ravus, I let go, I couldn't leave you here with them!"

He took a deep breath and held her close, staring beyond her out the window. Tenebrae's forests were peaceful and serene beneath the moon. It didn't _look_ like a monarch had died not seven days ago, now. What right did it have to look so perfect when everything inside the manor was falling apart?

 _I wish you would have,_ he didn't say. He thought he could have been happier if she had been safe with Regis.

"Come to bed," he said instead. "I'll sing you a song."

"Okay."

He tucked her beneath the covers dressed in some of his bedclothes, then climbed up next to her, let her clutch at his side where the bruises ached on his skin. It hurt-- but he was the big brother, and he was supposed to protect Luna, so he couldn't let her know.

_"Wandering child of the earth, do you know just how much you're worth? You have walked this path since you're birth, you were destined for more. There are those who'll tell you you're wrong. They will try to silence your song. But right here is where you belong, so don't search anymore. You are the dawn of a new day that's waking, a masterpiece still in the making...."_

 

Altissia was... a nightmare. More than Insomnia had been, when he had been foolish and tried to wear the sigil of Lucis and lost an arm for his trouble. More, because at the end of the pier was _Luna,_ glowing gold with the Trident, wrapped in white and doing exactly what he had begged her not to do. Waking the Tidemother, angry and fierce as anything, putting herself at risk and wasting her life, whittling it away to a man who wasn't _worth it._

He couldn't get to her fast enough. The city was half-destroyed-- an awful, terrible thing, that, caused by a ridiculous general's inability to obey orders and several someones with shoddy piloting skills, or possibly just the Leviathan's dislike for objects, buildings, and people. Ravus wasn't really surprised by the destruction; his sister _had_ insisted she had to wake _the most destructive_ of the Astrals despite all protests and begging of the contrary. Despite that doing so was _literally killing her_ in a way that Accordo's best healers could not understand.

He couldn't protect her from that. But he could-- he _would--_ protect her from Niflheim's idiocy. The King's hand was a useful tool in his arsenal to getting to her.. until they got there.

But after, feeling her ghost at his side as he made his way to round up the dying remnants of his troops... Honestly, that made it hurt all the worse.

_"Ravus?"_

"Yes Luna."

_"Sing me a song, Ravus!"_

He didn't want to. By the Six, he didn't want to. But right now she was still with him, for the moment, before she ran off to be with that stupid, foolish boy of hers, and.. and Ravus had never been able to tell her no. "Okay."

_"_ _Thank you."_

He waited until he was in an empty transport, devoid of all other life except the pilots, and then he buried his head in his hands and gave her what she'd asked for.

_"I will run alone tonight without you by my side. I guess you had a place you had to get to. I know your eyes, I know inside the walls you hide behind, and I saw the truth inside the real you..."_

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics in this fic belong to:
> 
>  
> 
> [Secret Garden's Sleepsong](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yQpU_73Dv0)  
> [Vienna Teng's Lullaby for a Stormy Night](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlmhMS_luX8)  
> [Adriana Figueroa's Wanderer's Lullaby](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70VlAyEUXYM)  
> [Starset's Die For You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUTzZGR64mI)
> 
>  
> 
> Two scenes were planned for but not written because they refused to be. They were: Lunafreya off becoming the Oracle, and Ravus before his courtmartial. Perhaps in another fic.
> 
> Also the & relationship tag is so weird to me...


End file.
